Saturday, 29 June 2013

Blue Horrors 2

I carried on with my idea for Faceless Horrors (although they aren't very horrible). I also experimented with different armature and sculpting materials, and using photos from life.This Blue Horror started out well, with a copper armature (better than aluminium) and using a ProCreate base layer. I continued using Fimo (1:1 MixQuick as always) for the upper layers, but something went wrong when I came to pose this sculpt's left arm. I think I thought it was too long - cut it, bent it back medially and began on the left hand. Bit of a disaster now - this guy clearly doesn't have any bones in his left arm! I painted but didn't finish this one. Lots of lessons there about accurate measurements, and that hands are difficult.

This one was a copper armature, with Green Stuff base layer, Fimo upper layers and a ProCreate head. Unfortunately he now looks like an elderly she with a large somewhat dropping bust. The arms again are a disaster - incorrect bone structure, too think and the creases don't look natural.

Using the same design, I sculpted again, this time using a different shaped armature (an elongated U) with ProCreate base layer, Fimo upper layers and the arms sculpted once the torso was finished. The armature for the arms was another U shaped piece of wire, superglued into place. A much better job of the arms I think, and the clothing creases are a little more improved. However, the thickness of arms against legs/torso is still not correctly balanced.

This was actually the earliest one I started, but went back in the box until last. An aluminium armature (bad), a bizarre mix of Green Stuff and ProCreate base layer and Fimo upper layers. I discovered that dropping cyanoacrylate superglue onto the armature provided a layer that Fimo would stick to (see Superglue Notes, below), enabling me to build the Fimo up from scratch. The left hand I sculpted flat, baked and glued on - making it look like a prosthetic hand rather than a real one. The right hand looks upside-down - I didn't get the finger length ratios right. The clothing creases look more natural, but again this sculpt looks a little under-powered.

Here they are against the same skaven jezzail as the last post:

The Blue Horror on the left is 36mm bottom to top and on the right 29mm bottom to top.Here is a closer look at all the hand sculpting horrors:

Some are better than others!Superglue NotesFor all of these, I did up to three bakes of ca. 10 mins each, at 110°C. Using cyanoacrylate superglue limits your casting options, as heating up the mould to vulcanise it runs the risk of liberating cyanide fumes. There is also a risk of doing this in the oven, although superglue is routinely used as a fume at 60°C in forensics labs. Please always read the Manufacturer Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) first.